CuriousCat Archive Page 93 of 202

  1. For example? Especially if you feel sad on a Monday or happy on a Friday or vice versa?

    in response to What's your fave Ghibli

    Spirited Away when I want a shot of pure joy, Mononoke when I want something more complicated and substantial

  3. Should dogs vote?

    in response to Why not just abolish the voting age entirely? And for that matter, let all current or former prisoners and non-citizens vote, too It seems to me that any restrictions on voting (except, perhaps, for a residency requirement) would be unjust, because you'd always be able to find a person who isn't allowed to vote who is more "deserving" or "qualified" than someone who is allowed

    frankly they'd run things better than we've done

  4. Well, as I'm sure you know, minors are treated differently under the law than adults. So I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

    in response to According to science, the brain develops until around age 25. Do you think that would be a good, non-arbitrary voting age?

    they are treated differently, but they still follow the rule of law. the premise of democracy is that power derives from the consent of the governed, yet minors are governed but have not consented. I'm not saying I have an answer to this, and I think most would agree there are ages where a person is too young to give informed consent, yet still need laws for protection and society still needs them to follow law to function. I'm just pointing out this is an ethical quandary worth meditating on, and, even if there is no perfect compromise, it's worth pondering whether the compromise we've made is the best one.

  5. Is that hyperbole? Or do you actually want to shatter our current economic system with zero regard for repercussions...

    in response to Will you be interested to do forex trading? Or investing in the stock market in the near future? It's a quick way to collect more money without exploiting any labor, i believe

    so you're doing the thing where I say "this thing should not exist" and you act like I'm suggesting it be destroyed with no replacement whatsoever, and I guess what I want to ask is, do you think that's dishonest?

  6. How’d you feel about BioShock?

    I got about 2/3 through it before giving it up. I wasn't having fun.

  8. Fair warning: book one is all setup, but otoh book two is all payoff.

    in response to What is it about?

    The setup has been quite fascinating, so that's cool!

  9. According to science, the brain develops until around age 25. Do you think that would be a good, non-arbitrary voting age?

    in response to Why not just abolish the voting age entirely? And for that matter, let all current or former prisoners and non-citizens vote, too It seems to me that any restrictions on voting (except, perhaps, for a residency requirement) would be unjust, because you'd always be able to find a person who isn't allowed to vote who is more "deserving" or "qualified" than someone who is allowed

    *sigh*

    do you have to follow the law before the age of 25? yes? then the question of whether it is just to be bound by laws you have no say in persists

  10. Fully different convo: best number

    in response to I think 16 is a better number

    your mom's phone number

  11. Why not just abolish the voting age entirely? And for that matter, let all current or former prisoners and non-citizens vote, too

    It seems to me that any restrictions on voting (except, perhaps, for a residency requirement) would be unjust, because you'd always be able to find a person who isn't allowed to vote who is more "deserving" or "qualified" than someone who is allowed

    in response to Should a person's age (especially if they're only 18 or younger than 21 years old) determine whether they have the right to vote or not? If they can't because they're too young to vote, why?

    well, one fear is that, if you let 6-year-olds vote, they aren't going to vote for good candidates, and, given the planet's population keeps going up, there are more six-year-olds than there are, like, 35-year-olds. another is that 6-year-olds are just going to vote the way their parents tell them to, so you're functionally giving one parent 2 or more votes.

  12. I didn’t claim it solved the philosophical problem at all. I just think practically 16 is fairer and would be better for society than 18

    in response to I think 16 is a better number

    ok

  15. What do you hope the last thing you google is

    How To Destroy Google

  16. Worst video idea that you thought was good when you came up with it

    I don't have bad ideas.

  17. If you were to do your own Play a Game Until It's Done While People Donate to charity twitch stream, what game or games would you do

    I sometimes fantasize about erasing all my progress in Nuclear Throne and playing until I've unlocked all the characters including Frog. It's hard to imagine, though, because NT is a game where more than an hour or so and I start to play on tilt.

  18. What would the zine equivalent of a video game feel like

    early cactus

  19. So age does not define maturity?

    in response to I think 16 is a better number

    age correlates with maturity, but not tightly enough that you can reliably assess one by looking solely at the other

  20. What is your thoughts on federal gun control. Watching the alt-right playbook, I feel like our ideologies align on everything except this.

    Before I answer, what are YOUR thoughts on federal gun control?

  21. I think 16 is a better number

    in response to Should a person's age (especially if they're only 18 or younger than 21 years old) determine whether they have the right to vote or not? If they can't because they're too young to vote, why?

    Maybe, but it's still deciding "the day before your birthday you're a child and the day of you're an adult" like that's not completely arbitrary. It doesn't really address the philosophical problem: why does a 15 year old have to follow the same laws as a 16 year old if only the latter has a voice in those laws?

  22. Which book(s) have you read from Jeff Vandermeer? How weird are his stories?

    I've only read Shriek: An Afterward. And, like, a chunk of Wonderbook, but that's nonfiction. Shriek was weird, but by no means the weirdest weird fiction I've read.

  23. Should a person's age (especially if they're only 18 or younger than 21 years old) determine whether they have the right to vote or not? If they can't because they're too young to vote, why?

    That's the big question, innit? Young people have to follow laws they have no agency in. We often talk about the possibility of lowering the voting age. But then you have to ask, well... how low should it go? Most people thing pre-adolescents are too young to vote, so... when is a person old enough? Maturity is a process, not an event, so it's very hard to point to an agreed-upon moment when one can be considered adult enough to be an informed voter. Similar questions circle around the drinking age and the age of consent. There's not good answer; 18 is a somewhat arbitrary age, it just feels like there should be AN age and 18 is what we've agreed upon.

    Maybe in a better society the gaining of voting rights would be a process the same as growing up, or law would be treated differently for people who aren't allowed to vote, or voting would be something you opt into when you demonstrate and genuine interest in it. It's hard to think of a way to MEASURE the readiness to vote that isn't going to be misused to deny voting rights to certain people, so better systems are hard to imagine. But it's always worth thinking about!

  24. What is it about?

    in response to Have you read any book this week?

    It's about the Earth 500 years from now after the end of the nation state, where travel is so fast, cheap, and easy that you can work in Singapore, live in Chile, and have lunch in Ethiopia, so the idea of being a citizen of any single nation has died. There are, instead, several different major cultures you can pledge to when you reach adulthood, and you will be citizen of that culture, follow its laws, and identify which culture and laws you are following with your clothing. You can also choose not to pledge to any culture, and follow a set of general, simplified laws, or reject law entirely. This means that all law, all citizenship, is voluntary, and, without nation states, there has been peace for centuries.

    I'm not 100% sure where the plot is going yet, but I *believe* the overall arc of the book is that this world is going to go to war for the first time in 300 years. It's also the first of a 4-part series, the last one which comes out this year and is apparently *quite long*, so I'm pretty dang early in the story, all things considered.

  25. Why is it that most people have a clear preference for dating lighter skin people

    [citation extremely needed]

  26. Have you read any book this week?

    I'm working my way through Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightening, which is quite good!

  27. you should, some versions come with that neat penguin game

    in response to Do you use linux?

    nah I'm good

  29. What’s the coldest you’ve ever been?

    when I was in high school, my friends and I would sometimes go see local bands play in San Gegorio, which was this tiiiiiiiny town about 15 minutes south of ours. the shows would happen in this out-of-business cafe that was owned by one of my classmates' family. so this one show, we're all having a terrible time. the bands aren't good, my friends are fighting with each other, nobody wants to be there. but we got dropped off by one friend's mom and she wasn't coming back to get us for hours. none of us had cars, and these were the days before kids had cell phones. the cafe doesn't have a working landline and none of the other shops are open. it's the middle of the night. and one friend spontaneously says "I'm walking home!" now, this 15-minute drive is about a 4 1/2 hour walk, over mountains, on the side of an unlit highway. so I take off after her, letting her know, hey, if you're walking, I'm walking with you, but praying she changes her mind. which she does before we even get to the end of the road, thank goodness.

    but, on the way back to the cafe, I step in a puddle up to my ankle.

    it's the middle of winter. granted, it's the middle of winter *in California*, so it's not really very cold, but it's probably in the forties, and there's no heat in the cafe. body heat is enough to keep that tolerable for concert purposes, but it's not enough for warming up a cold extremity. so my foot is VERY COLD, for hours. when the concert starts to wind down, I perch myself on a counter, take my shoe and sock of, and hold my toes over a candle, hoping that will accomplish anything. it doesn't, really. so was just really frickin' cold in the foot for hours until my friend's mom showed up and I got in a car with actual heat.

    I live in New England now, where winters are actually cold, so I've probably been much colder on walks to the store during a polar vortex or whatever, but I've never been so cold for SO LONG since.

    (I can't remember if this is the same night one of my friends got roofie'd and we had to babysit her all night; that may have been what everyone was arguing about, or I may just be mashing two horrible San Gregorio shows in my memory. high school sucks.)

  30. Use this moment to conjure up your own little witticism of the same flavor as "check please!" or "I'll have what she's having" but about one of the most recent things to happen to you today

    "I'll call back later!"

  31. If you transposed a block of original text in a standard font onto a canvas, using paint, & then framed it, would it be a painting or a piece of writing?

    in response to Umm yes it is meaningful that the painting is visible

    yes

  32. With working conditions being what they are in the gaming industry, the toxicity of gamer culture and how it exacerbates these conditions, and the number of people who've left the industry for other tech fields and are happier and healthier for it; is it wrong to write the whole thing off and hope for something like the video game crash of 1983 to come along and cripple this industry to temper it's worst excesses, if not kill it outright? Put another way, would the world really be lesser *without* video games?

    that's a little like saying the solution to a bad smell is to cut off your nose

  34. Is the beginners guide a video game? Is the ability to walk around enough meaningful interactivity?

    what do we mean by "meaningful" here? it's a first-person game, you can't experience it without walking around. if you're looking at a painting, is it "meaningful" that the painting is visible?

  35. Why is our angry side often addressed as our "true color"? What about the times where we give it all? The times where we love more than we should? The times we check on people when nobody else did? All these love but some people will still see your bad side as the one that matters

    I think it's more that your true colors are your entire self, and so your "real self" is only known when all parts of you have been seen, and your worst parts are the ones that stay hidden longest

    or maybe maybe it's the cancel culture

  36. at what point does a video game stop being a video game and instead turn into just a Cool Computer Artwork

    there is no line dividing the two, and, arguably, a space of significant overlap. if you're not sure which one a piece of software is, there may not be a correct answer. but that makes it interesting! try looking at it with both perspectives and see how you read it differently. genre is a lens for interpretation.

  37. What would it take for people to start using Linux en masse

    the chief selling points for linux are that it's free - which means little since most OSes come pre-installed on computers and offer free upgrades - and that it's open-source - which is good but not many people care about. in terms of what people DO care about, linux doesn't do much other OSes don't do and is more cumbersome to get hold of and use, so one or both of those would have to change.

  38. Bold of you to say Wind Rises when Ocean Waves and Only Yesterday exists.

    "Do I spoil you, my little bear?"

    in response to What's your least fave Ghibli

    Ain't seen those ones.

  39. Not everyone spends time reading social justice definitions on the Internet, plenty of Black people think they can be racist

    in response to I feel like being bigoted (what's referred to as hurting feelings) and being racist (meaningful systemic inequality) are important distinctions, but when people HEAR you can't be racist to white people, they hear one can't be BIGOTED to white people, and not only is that incorrect, it is terrible for optics.

    by "social justice definitions on the internet" you mean "the definition Black people have been using throughout history"

    like, dude, not everyone knows that Sarah Jessica Parker and Mary-Louise Parker aren't related, you don't just pretend they are because it's easier

    it's ok to correct people

    I'm harping on this point because progress cannot be made if white people can't decenter their feelings from racial discourse, and allowing them to keep their bowdlerized versions of terms just to protect their feelings is the polar opposite of that

    like... how do we get them to give up their very material advantages if we treat "correcting their misuse of a word" as a bridge too far?

  40. I feel like being bigoted (what's referred to as hurting feelings) and being racist (meaningful systemic inequality) are important distinctions, but when people HEAR you can't be racist to white people, they hear one can't be BIGOTED to white people, and not only is that incorrect, it is terrible for optics.

    in response to Wouldn’t it be easier to say that you can’t be racist to white people as a class?

    you're saying "people" when you mean "white people"

  41. What's your least fave Ghibli

    in response to What's your fave Ghibli

    Wind Rises

  42. And can the site of art be art?

    in response to Are people art?

    I think the body can be art in certain contexts, dunno if it is art all the time/ maybe Sam Hsieh would feel differently, though.

  43. Are any bands good bands?

    in response to Is Creed a good band?

    they might be giants is the only good band

  44. Wouldn’t it be easier to say that you can’t be racist to white people as a class?

    in response to you actually think someone can't be racist to white people?

    if by "easier" you mean "more palatable to white people," yes, but that is not my chief concern

  45. Also note, when men tell each other repeatedly "women don't like men who talk about their feelings", and make conjectures about women's choices and beheviours without ever talking to them, no women is actually involved in reinforcing toxic masculinity.

    in response to I guess the non-sexist version of this statement would be "women can also reinforce toxic masculinity"

    I agree with everything up until you said no woman is involved.

    Christina Hoff Sommers, for instance, is absolutely involved in reinforcing toxic masculinity.

  47. I remember reading that many people who voted for Bernie in 2016 were actually more conservative than the average democrat, and voting for Bernie as a vote against Hillary Clinton? How substantial a part of this voter base, if really existing at all, was this?

    it was, to my understanding, extremely small, and reporters had to do some digging to find examples. the average Bernie supporter went to Clinton when she won the primary in higher numbers than the average Clinton supporter went to Obama in 2008, for instance.

  48. What's your fave Ghibli

    Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away, depending on how I'm feeling on a given day

  50. I guess the non-sexist version of this statement would be "women can also reinforce toxic masculinity"

    in response to Women don't like men who talk about their feelings

    this is true, and I also don't believe that's what "women don't like men who talk about their feelings" was trying to say

  51. you actually think someone can't be racist to white people?

    in response to Doesn't your ship of theseus video accurately describe a large amount of leftist rhetoric? I guess it's more of a motte-and-bailey, but I've always perceived defund the police, abolish prisons, ACAB, all white people are racist etc. etc. in this way. It's always a more provocative catchphrase than the actual idea intended and then a explanation as to how the terms "racist," "abolish," etc are being defined in a different way in this scenario than they generally are colloquially. This may seem like a concern troll but I am genuinely interested in what you think is different about these phrases.

    racism is about power. racism is housing discrimination, wealth gaps, mortality rates, voter disenfranchisement. racism is material. none of that happens to the group in power. all you can do is hurt their feelings, and I'm sorry your gradeschool teacher told you that's all there is to racism, but she was wrong.

  52. do you mean "fanfiction can be art" or do you mean "all fanfiction is art" and do you include My Immortal

    in response to Is fanfiction art?

    bad art is still art

  53. Is Creed a good band?

    I guess I never investigated their albums, but if it turns out they're not absolutely horrible I will be shocked.

  54. Women do and don't like various things depending on the specific woman.

    in response to Women don't like men who talk about their feelings

    "women are people" really shouldn't be such a mindblow

  55. Are people art?

    in response to Is fanfiction art?

    people can be the site of art

  57. Incorrect. Carbon is a testable, provable element. Hotness is a socially-constructed value judgement. 10 yard penalty, repeat first down.

    in response to When everyone's hot, nobody is.

    by the same argument, "when everyone's hot, no one is" is also untestable. the parallel I intended to draw is that hotness is not relativistic, wherein one can only be hot if others are not. rather, it is simply a state of being that can be shared by all, the many, or the few.

  58. What’s a good counter argument to shut down the whole “But what about BLM destroying property and burning down the city?” cries in response to me bringing up the January 6th siege on the capital?

    the person who said that doesn't deserve your counterargument

  59. "climate change accelerating is good, because the more climate change accelerates, the more action in response to climate change there will be" - some dumbass accelerationist

    ok

  60. You’re fired

    in response to What gun?

    tell that to me and my buster sword

  61. Is fanfiction art?

    yes

  64. Emm, but if everyone's rich, then nobody is poor

    Isn't it?

    in response to When everyone's hot, nobody is.

    it's almost like you can't judge the quality of an argument by whether it follows a specific sentence-format and have to engage with its actual substance

  65. Yeah, but I think it would be hard to argue that whiteness hasn't been leveraged by the owning class to advance their own interests at the expense of those of the working class, I mean, isn't that the whole purpose of whiteness in the first place?

    in response to I think I might argue otherwise. Whiteness is a huge part of why we don't have a welfare state or functioning government.

    again, we are not arguing that white supremacy doesn't harm poor whites. it does. this dispute seems to have arisen when someone questioned whether it harms whites AS MUCH as patriarchy harms men. which I haven't even taken a position on.

    so I guess let's pick it apart.

    it's kind of hard to compare, honestly, because much of the damage men take from toxic masculinity is psychological: inability to talk about their feelings, unwillingness to seek help, passive fear of other men who are constantly jockeying for status, anxiety about whether they are living up to visions of masculinity, and ostracization if they are in any way deviant from the norm (queer, trans, effeminate). meanwhile it seems most of the damage we can point to whites taking from white supremacy is material: a handful of largely unnoticed privileges in exchange for being financially gutted by the moneyed class, and an inability to empathize with nonwhites who could help them change their material conditions.

    I'm not sure there's much value in trying to rank them opposite each other, honestly. it's not a competition. they both suck ass.

  67. When I was young I used to not care about being as hot as celebrities but now I do, what gives bud why am I not hotter

    the question is: why can you not see your own hotness?

  69. What sword do you think is unquestionably the coolest

    Masamune

  70. Most & least favorite Aaron Taylor Johnson performances?

    uh... Age of Ultron was Least Boring and Godzilla was Most Boring?

  71. What to do if you like making art, want to be better at it, but feel like you aren't able contribute any Bold, New Message to a Space / would be taking someone else's place more deserving

    there aren't limited slots on art-making, and you not making art doesn't guarantee that deserving people will be successful. if you're lucky enough to get big, use your privilege to elevate the people you consider deserving.

    the hard truth is you will problem toil in obscurity and mostly be doing it for your own edification, so maybe don't worry so much about whether you're justifying your existence with Grand Statements. your art will be what it will be and the audience will decide how valuable they find it. keep reading, keep thinking, keep experiencing good art, and your work will grown and deepen. it'll be what it'll be.

  72. what's the deal with when I am not making stuff, I get bummed out about making stuff, but if I start making more stuff, I just feel empty and bored

    do you stay empty a bored when you've been making stuff a while? the first day or two is always the hardest for me.

  73. I think I might argue otherwise. Whiteness is a huge part of why we don't have a welfare state or functioning government.

    in response to It’s true though

    whiteness is why that lack of a welfare state hits non-whites harder

  74. What do you have against VICE?

    in response to I've really enjoyed a lot of your videos and writing about games, who are some writers and publications you'd recommend to get more thoughtful games insight while waiting for more stuff from you? Specifically trying to move away from the boringly pervasive "mechanics are the only thing worth analysing" and "the plot is a puzzle to be solved" mindsets that seem so common in internet games discussion (and media in general tbh).

    Didn't say I have anything against Vice, Waypoint will just always be Waypoint to me.

    Although I've gathered that Vice is kind of ass...

  75. have you ever thought about an online creator, thought "oh I haven't checked out there work in a while, I remember thinking they were pretty cool," go on with your life (maybe look at their more recent stuff) and then like a week later they get canceled because that's happened to me like 3 times this year

    sounds like it's your fault

Anon commented:
Ian replied: